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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945370">"Cruxymorn" or "Mercy for an old man"</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssaultWithACursedShip/pseuds/AssaultWithACursedShip'>AssaultWithACursedShip</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cruxymorn, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Violent Sex, not safe for brains</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:07:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,408</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945370</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssaultWithACursedShip/pseuds/AssaultWithACursedShip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Crux and Mercymorn hatefucking, I have never been more appalled with myself. This was a joke that got out of hand and now I'm making it everyone else's problem.<br/>cw: Crux fuxx, Mercymorn is Mercymorn, violence, hate fucking, literally if Crux/Mercy isn't enough of a content warning for you idk what to tell you. Best read with your eyes closed, if you're determined to read on then grab your sick bag and buckle up.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Crux/Mercymorn the First</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>"Cruxymorn" or "Mercy for an old man"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Marshal of Drearburh signed the manifest and returned it to the shuttle pilot, around him skeletons unloaded crates of offworld supplies: nutrient paste, meat, vitamin supplements and a thick-ish package sealed in plain brown flimsy addressed to one Gideon Nav. It felt like a magazine and Crux knew he was quite uninterested in the vile contents. All parts of the shipment accounted and signed for he turned to leave; the skeletons could handle the rest. Trudging across the gritty black earth, if you could even call it that, of the landing field Crux's mind fell to his next task on the day's roster. Some of the skeletons on the field rotation would need replacement soon, 2 nuns were likely to be moving from their sick beds to the rendering cauldron by weeks end though the sisters could handle that, a review of the snow leek harvest (always the same but best to keep on top of that, the house did rather depend on them as the only source of fresh vegetables), planning out the next month's public appearances for the former Reverend Parents, though that was of course less effort since the vow of silen-his train of thought was interrupted by the oddest sensation. He felt a wave of absolute malice wash over him, one he had grown to appreciate over the last few years and he puckered with excitement and not a little distaste. She was here, the crafty old witch, sainted though she may be, must have been on the shuttle and snuck past while he was preoccupied with a suspected irregularity in the order.</p><p>He stopped and glanced about, but seeing no cloisterites present he spoke to the open air "And to what do we owe this dubious honour, venerated necrosaint?", barely making even the most cursory effort to mask his distaste for her. Her, progenitor of the hated Eighth House, Lyctor, hand of the Emperor, the ironically named Saint of Joy, She of the Permanent Stick Rammed Up Her Arse, Mercymorn the First...and for the last 3 years, his enemy with benefits. Crux still didn't know what had first brought her to the Ninth, it certainly wasn't official business that he'd caught her skulking around the landing field, her brilliant robe glowing in the dim light and completely ruining her skulking. Confronting her and discovering her to be one of the hands of the Necromancer Divine himself Crux had performed the expected obsequiences but surely she saw something in him, in his filmy eyes or the set of his shoulders, his tone of voice rasping and bubbling where hers was a screech...it was hatred, it was contempt, and it was electrifying. Crux had spent his life hating a great many people and things but the sheer distain that radiated off this young, ancient woman was unlike anything he'd experienced in 80 years of life on the holy Ninth. </p><p>Within 10 minutes of meeting her she had threatened his life, broken his arm and said all manner of unkind things about his parents, grandparents and lineage in general, within 20 minutes they were stumbling into his squalid little cell (her words), snarling and lusting all in a confusing blur of contempt so hot it fused into some sort of erotic hate-glass. He would climb mountains for her, so as better to drop things on her from a height, he would wade seas of blood just to spit in her face, he would burn the world for her, provided she was thoroughly chained to it beforehand. </p><p>"I need not explain myself to you" Mercymorn shrilled from just behind his left ear, and by the Tomb no one alive or dead could make the word "you" drip scorn like that. Before he could turn he felt a light, cold hand touch his shoulder and his jaw clamped shut before he could say another word, so he had to settle for rolling his eyes at her, the yellowing corneas spiderwebbed with veins. He repulsed her, he knew, but the feeling was mutual, she thoroughly disgusted him, and he couldn't wait to see that robe on his cell floor. </p><p>----</p><p>Mercy knew she'd hate herself when this was over, but she reasoned that she hated herself now already, and would hate herself tomorrow regardless so in the grand scheme of things why not live a little? And who would even question her, the Saint of Joy (urgh)? Few who dared made that mistake more than once, but there were always exceptions, such as the creature in front of her, vibrating with a roiling mix of lust and detestation that made her sick to her stomach and moister than the foetid air of the first house. He was tall and not well built, but not slim either, "rangy" was probably the word Augustine would use, but Augustine was a moron who thought way too much of himself. Mercy settled on tough, knobbly, strong but in that grotesque ninth way where even the halest and heartiest amongst them would make the average necro look flush with health. But looks? After the first 1000 year looks become less interesting, the universe if full of pretty people willing to do terrible things to your vagina, the shine wore off them pretty quickly. Plus, at 10,000 years old, a 25-year-old in the flush of their youth seemed nauseatingly young, and not the good kind of nausea, the bad kind. No, what Mercy valued was someone who stirred strong emotion, something to really get the engine revving, and for now, this'd do. </p><p>She let him lead her through to the interior of the disgusting hole of a House, Ana's folly. This place was dying, she could taste it but all she could do was wonder why it had possibly taken this stillborn house so long to twitch it's last and expire? She was getting lost in her thoughts, so she stepped on the back of Crux's heel for good measure, causing him to stumble and give a curse. Though, in the present circumstances this came out as something along the lines of "mmphpm mmmmhm", but they were at his door already and he was fumbling for the key. She did not glance up and down the corridor, no one was close, but she let Crux sweat in his furtive hurriedness. At last, idiot got the door open and she shoved him roughly through it, pushing it closed behind her and turning the latch. </p><p>"MmmMMphM zmmhmm hmmmemm" said Crux, behind her. She turned and in one motion backhanded him across the face, restoring his lips just in time to bust one of them. He rubbed his jaw, saying "I said, you shame me with your sordid attentions, you god bothering strumpet", a trickle of blood from where she's hit him, shocking to see the man even had any blood in him (though, she knew he did, she'd checked). "I'm the one who should be ashamed of myself, you shadowy little ninth house tart" she retorted, before snatching the creaking leather front of his mouldering jacket and pulling him into a kiss, eyes open, glaring daggers at each other as their lips moved against each other and she tasted his blood. Gross. In a sudden movement she felt a gnarled hand slip around her waist, almost tender for a second before he shoved her away from himself and towards the narrow cot, apparently repaired since last time. Mercy staggered backwards catching her leg on the edge and toppling into the manky bedding, but not before her foot shot out, catching Crux on the inside of the knee, y'know, that exact spot that's just excruciating. He fell spasming to the floor and cursing her every name, and she felt her heart speed in her chest, the bile rose in her throat and a zinging feeling of electricity darted from her groin and into her core. She sneered at him as her hips reflexively wound themselves in a circle. </p><p>----</p><p>The pain in his knee now fading, that was a cheap shot even by her standards, Crux hauled his aging body upright and in a lumpy movement, shrugged out of his jacket. Next he carefully took off his shoes and placed them neatly by the door, not because he was a meticulous person in this way, but under the impression that it annoyed Mercymorn (it did, he'd just dumped his jacket on the floor but now he's putting his shoes away neatly? Aughh!), it was all part of the dance. "How shall I debase myself in your service, your ladyship?" he said sarcastically "and I do mean that as sarcastically as possible" he said, to irritate her further. He glowered at her and she looked like she couldn't decide whether she wanted to kill him or fuck him, or maybe split the difference and fuck him to death. He had no doubt the foul old young woman could as well, even ignoring the fact that as his age, every single one of these bouts should by rights cause his heart to explode in his chest as he exploded inside her. She boasted that she was the master of the human body, that she knew every nerve and fibre, every duct and tube and endocrine gland, every bone and ligament, and mayhap that was exaggerated but she certainly knew her stuff. </p><p>She commanded him to disrobe, and so he did, pulling off his shirt to reveal a wreck of a body, still strong, still broad in build, but sagging and with every impression of dry rot. In a grim sort of way it almost complemented the wet sound of his lungs, his parched outer shell. Next came the trousers, no underwear underneath, unbuttoned and dropped swiftly, and throw directly at her with a cursory "fuck you". And so he stood before her as she indignantly shoved the rough fabric off her face, shivering slightly in the chill you could never quite escape in Drearburgh, in nothing but a pair of yellowing socks and hard as a rock. He folded his arms and spat on the ground, a tinge of blood still in his spittle, and demanded "Well then you ornery hag? Are you just going to gawp like a gormless moron or are you going to do something?" before stumping over to the bed and sitting heavily, his nipples darkening slightly with arousal. </p><p>He reached over to her and grabbed her hair and pulled her in to another violent kiss, she bit him, she actually fucking bit him! His cock jumped at this and his other hand found her throat. She had one arm slipped around him and the other glid over his shoulder, he felt a jolt as the arm went limp, and then a second as her hand dropped to his penis and seized it in a firm but careful grip. That was one thing he knew, it may be violent and he may hate her guts, but she was an artist and she knew when to be soft as well as hard. </p><p>----</p><p>He pulsed gently in her hand and she felt a rising sensation of her own, within. A fluttering, tingling sensation in her vulva of vasodilation, smooth muscle relaxing. She was going to hurt him, and he deserved it, but she was also going to blow his cobwebby, rancid old mind because there's no point being the best at sex in the entire universe if you don't use it from time to time. And Mercy was the best, she knew not just the where, but the why and the how of the body and she could make nerve impulses dance for her like a concert pianist even without her necromantic powers.</p><p>She broke the kiss, slapped him and released his cock, her fingertips just grazing their way up it and causing him to shudder, as she raised both hands and grabbed his shoulder and forced him onto his back, undoing the nerve block in his arm as she went. A smile quirked her face as she watched his discomfort as feeling rushed back to his arm, vile old bag of bones and sinew that he was. He lay there, fuming silently at her, his horrible dry skin stretched over his ungainly body and she thought even a halfway competent necro could wrap a skeleton better in tendons and leathery parchment skin to make themselves a horrible Crux fucktoy (though, why they would even she could not conceive, he was truly repugnant). But a construct could not look at her like that, with that heady melange of distaste and desire, that awful look that said both that he would as gladly see her writing in ecstasy as in her final death throes. It was a look she rarely saw outside of a mirror, and even the Saint of Joy felt weird about getting off to her own self-hatred. </p><p>Her gorge rising and her underwear flooding, she snapped into action, casting aside her gossamer robe and whipping off her blouse with a practiced motion. She shimmied out of her trousers before casting her sodden panties across the room to land with a faint plap noise in a corner somewhere. And thus, her body ageless, and perfect and her face snarling, she set upon him. Nails raked down his chest, gouging wounds and knitting them closed in a single motion she sat astride him, guiding his incongruously aesthetically pleasing penis into her with lyctorial grace as he rocked himself upwards and bit into her trapezoidal with a level of almost cannibalistic savagery and kinkiness that would shame the third house. She rode him aggressively, contracting the muscles of her vagina around him with the practice and skill of 10,000 years of anatomical study and the furious, repressed sexuality she had gifted her house.</p><p>----</p><p>Crux felt his blood, pounding through him as hers dripped from the instantly healing wound on her shoulder and sizzled. No Ninth nun could fuck like this he mused, not without needing reconstructive surgery and 6 months in traction to heal. She was furious, and wild, and the look of hateful pity in her eyes bored into his very core as he bored into hers. He took the nipple of her right breast between his teeth and teased it for a second, before biting down just a little harder than necessary to see her flinch. She laughed, breathlessly and scornfully "Is that really the best you can do, worm?", a challenge. He wrapper her in his enormous arms and rolled over on the narrow cot, raising himself above her before breaking her nose. The first time, hate her though he did, he had flinched at such treatment, but he now knew the lyctor's body was made of stronger stuff and threw caution to the wind. </p><p>Stolid, decrepit, pious and sour Crux fucked like a man possessed, as much a brawl as it was love making. He felt the swordswoman necrosaint's calloused fingers latch onto his nipples and twist, making his eyes water, and he spat in her face. His vision dimmed around the edges with the strain, but he could not stop, not now, he couldn't let her win. She began to writhe, sinuously beneath him, her legs wrapped around him, trapping him and pulling him into her harder as he felt endorphins flood his system and hers. He hated her, loathed her, she was antithesis to the ways of the ninth and everything he stood for, but fuck was she a good lay. </p><p>Her own movements against him grew more frantic and violent, she raked at him, tore at his ear and even headbutted him, right in the chin, making him feel like he'd cracked a tooth as she began to moan "I hate you I hate you I hate you so fucking much", he answered in kind, almost a mantra. "I hate you, I loathe you, I abhor you" as he felt his climax growing within him as she began to crest herself. They never fucked long, both too desperate to see the back of the other and be done with the whole stinking affair, both sick with desire waiting for the next time.</p><p>----</p><p>Her hands moved over him, a tweak here, a punch there, the delicate breaking of a rib to be knitted clean before she left as she controlled his horrible body like a gristly puppet. For her own part she ground herself against him, wallowing in the pain and pleasure he could elicit. Sharp and fuzzy, waves of sensation shot through her mixing chaotically with the taste of bile she felt as she looked upon him. It would come soon, she could see his nervous system laid out before her, gauge the spiking levels of dopamine in his blood, see the beginnings of muscular contractions around his pelvic floor and she bathed in it, because Mercy fucked for Mercy and Mercy alone. Crux was oddly talented, but she took as much of her pleasure in her own mastery and in the release of giving in to her own self-hatred. He seethed at her, flecks of spittle at the edge of his swollen lips and a litany of verb heavy insults fell upon her and at that, she came. Back contorting as she dug her fingernails into the stringy meat of his neck she came like a perfect fucking monster. She wouldn't look at him, but she felt him hit his peak too with a bubbling grunt that made her happy she hadn't eaten today, but fuck what a rush. She felt the alien presence of his semen within her as he throbbed and moaned like a goat with a broken leg. "Disgusting" he muttered before collapsing heavily on top of her before rolling off to one side, dripping with his blood and her juices and his own claggy emissions. "At least you're good for one thing, revered necrosaint" he said blearily through the post coital haze, and for a moment she didn't hate him, too buoyed up on the sparkling trails of her own orgasm. Then she remembered where she was and what she had just done and revelled in the crashing wave of self-loathing and absolute detestation for him, almost a second, perverse orgasm in of itself. </p><p>----</p><p>Crux felt the bed shift as the saint of joy hauled herself upright and focused his eyes just in time to see her wiping herself off on his discarded shirt in an act of supreme pettiness as she went hunting for her robe. Saw her root through the pockets and retrieve a packet of cigarettes, draw one from the packet and light it before returning to sit up on the bed and drip. "I hate those things, they stink" he said. "I know" she said, but the malice now seemed half hearted. He braced himself for the moment he knew was coming as she took a deep drag on the wretched thing and stubbed it out on his chest. A life lived at Drearburh is a life trained for hiding pain and emotions, and the pain of it didn't cross his face, he would deny her that one last pleasure and she knew it. </p><p>----</p><p>"As usual, if you ever tell a soul" she started, and Crux snorted with derision "As if I'd shame myself publicly with the knowledge that I was tupping an unageing monstrosity like you", she rolled her eyes once again impressed how this lumpy disaster of a walking corpse could possibly think that he should be the one embarrassed to be seen with her, ever young, ever beautiful, a holy hand of God his awful self. And knowing, in the hateful little part of her heart where the eternal fire of personal disgust still burnt that it was deserved. That of the two of them, she was the more wretched...though the gap was so fine as to be non-existent. "See you again in a couple of months, foul harpy?" he asked as she turned to stalk back across the landing field towards the shuttle, "If you're not dead by then you shambling corpse" she retorted and flashed her middle finger over her shoulder. Turning to look back to him as she reached the shuttle, she saw he'd already wandered off, one final smack of ultimate disrespect that would have her running back soon enough to slake her thirst for vengeance, self-flagellation and geriatric, ninth house dick.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'M VERY SORRY THAT YOU READ THAT BUT REALLY YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME</p></blockquote></div></div>
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